


The Yuletide Gift-fic Temporary Title

by Zath_Chauvert



Category: The Middleman (TV)
Genre: Mummies, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:26:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zath_Chauvert/pseuds/Zath_Chauvert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set sometime after The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse, this is a story of transatlantic voyages, malevolent mummies, and sex pollen.  In other words, it's just another ordinary day in the life of Wendy Watson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Yuletide Gift-fic Temporary Title

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yhlee (etothey)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/gifts).



> I apologize in advance for the crappy ending. Sorry about that. I hope that I at least managed to make everything which leads up to it somewhat interesting. All I can do is promise a "director's cut" with a more interesting conclusion sometime in the new year.

"Borp, borp." The sound of her Middle-watch dragged Wendy out of a deep sleep. For an all too brief moment, she lay there, facedown in the dim light of her illegally sublet loft bedroom, blinking groggily and trying to decide if she had really heard the noise which usually preceded an unscheduled call to duty or if she had just imagined it. She had almost managed to convince herself that it must have been part of a dream when all hopes of being able to go back to sleep were dashed by the noise repeating itself, "borp, borp," followed by the far too chipper voice of her boss.

"Rise and shine, Dubbie," said the Middleman from the tiny screen of the Middle-watch.

Wendy wanted nothing more than to let loose a long string of colorful profanity at him for waking her up less than three hours after the end of a long day spent flushing a nest of genuine bloodthirsty alien invaders out of a sci-fi convention full of cosplayers who thought is was all part of the entertainment and refused to break character, but she was still too sleep-fogged to engage in that level of creativity just yet. Instead, she settled for grumbling something into her pillow which only the Middleman's extensive linguistic training was able to decipher as the words, "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

"It's 11:52am in Cairo. Don't worry," he added, "it'll be an easy job, and you'll have plenty of time to catch up on your sleep once we're on the plane."

Wendy groaned and rolled over so that she could stare at the ceiling. She loved her job. Really, she did. She just loved it a whole lot more when she was able to do it after a full night's sleep in her own bed. Wendy was just about to go off on a mental rant against the unfairness of being the last line of defense against all the weirdness of the universe when the meaning of her employer's words finally penetrated the conscious levels of her mind. "Wait," she exclaimed, sitting bolt upright and grabbing her Middle-watch off of her nightstand. "When you say Cairo, you don't mean Cairo, Illinois, or Cairo, Nebraska, or any of those other little American towns that just happen to be named Cairo, right? You're talking about Cairo, Egypt?"

"Of course, Dubbie. What other Cairo is there in the correct time zone for it to be 11:52am right now?"

"Judging by your tone of voice, I'm guessing the answer is 'none.' But the important thing is that we're going to Egypt for the obvious reason, right?" Wendy prompted eagerly.

"That's right, Dubbie. Pack a lunch and put on your adventure pants, because we have a rogue mummy to take down."

"Sweet!" Wendy had always wanted to see Egypt, and now it looked like she was going to get to do so while kicking some supernatural ass. She knew her boss well enough that she did not need to confirm that the 'adventure pants' he was talking about were figurative instead of literal, which was a relief, so she only had one last question left to ask. "Do I have time to eat some breakfast before we go?"

"You have time to eat, pack, and do whatever else you want, provided that you can do it in the next seven minutes and thirty seven seconds. I'll see you then. Over and out." With that, the Middleman's image vanished, leaving an oversized but relatively ordinary looking watch face in its place.

"Seven minutes and thirty seven seconds," Wendy said with a resigned sigh, as she swept her blankets to one side, climbed out of bed, and got dressed. "Great." Oh well, at least they kept pre-assembled travel kits on hand at headquarters, so there was no need to worry about gathering clean uniforms or any of the standard weapons or other gear. All she needed to spend time on was grabbing a sketchbook and reading material for the plane and whatever she wanted to wear while she was off the clock, so by the time that Wendy descended the spiral metal staircase to the main living area of her surprisingly spacious illegal sublet, carrying a carry-on sized duffle bag, she still had five minutes and fifteen seconds left to throw down some chow before her boss arrived to sweep her away to fight ancient mummified evil in another hemisphere. If she had been more awake, she might nave noticed that the lights were already on.

"Hey, Dud-dub," called a voice from the far side of the room. It was Wendy's roommate and BFF since freshman year of art school, Lacey, which was fortunate, because finding anyone else in the apartment at that hour would have required some serious explanations.

"Hey yourself, Lace," Wendy called in reply as she headed to the kitchen area of the loft. "What's with the apparent all-nighter?"

"You remember that new sushi restaurant that's scheduled to open in a couple of weeks, the one that claims it's going to have live baby octopus and prawns on the menu?"

Wendy opened the fridge and began rooting through its contents while her voice echoed from the chilly depths, "I wish I didn't, but yeah."

"Well, right after you went to bed, I finally got a good idea for how the protest should go, and I've been working on it ever since," said Lacey proudly. "I am on a roll. I am on fire. I am on a fiery roll! Take a look!" Wendy removed her head from the fridge to see Lacey holding up a yellow legal pad and flipping through the pages to show that it was nearly half full of text and drawings.

"Just please tell me that this idea involves keeping all your clothes on." Not finding what she was looking for, Wendy abandoned the fridge, located the bread, and threw a couple of slices into the toaster. Then she raided the fruit bowl on the counter, stuffing an orange into one pocket of her jacket and a banana into the other.

"Don't worry, Dub-dub," said Lacey, trying to reassure her roommate, "even if I wanted to become a repeat offender, this freakishly sudden and severe cold snap that we've been having makes that particular method of getting people's attention really undesirable right now. Not only will my dress be remaining on my body where it belongs, but it will also be hidden beneath several additional layers of insulation. I need to find out if it's still possible to buy Wacky WallWalkers in bulk and if so whether they work on glass at low temperatures, but this public performance is shaping up to be epic even without public nudity. Enough about me though. What about you? You look like you're getting ready to run away from home."

"As a matter of fact, I _am_ running away from home, albeit temporarily," said Wendy as she continued her hunt for food, now searching through the snack cupboard. "I just got a call from work and need to be out of here in," she glanced at the Middle-watch, "about three and a half minutes. There's a sudden mega-urgent rush job out of town that we need to take care of," she continued as a couple of Clif Bars joined the fruit in her pockets, "but the Bossman says that it shouldn't take very long, so I only expect to be gone a couple of days." Her pockets full, Wendy returned her attention to the fridge. "Where did all the bagels go?"

"I gave them to Joe 90 this afternoon," Lacey paused, glanced at her own watch, and then corrected herself, "er, make that yesterday afternoon now that we're a few hours into tomorrow. You know what I mean. Anyway, you hadn't touched them in nearly a week, and they were rock hard, and Joe promised that he'd bring over a fresh bag in the next day or two to replace them, so I figured letting him have them made everyone happy. Sorry."

"No, it's fine. Mind if I steal one of your bottles of organic fair trade hazelnut soy latte flavored protein smoothies?"

"Go for it."

"Thanks." Wendy took one of the aforementioned beverages out of the fridge, removed the lid, and downed half of it in a matter of seconds. It supposedly had the nutritional content of a healthy meal and enough caffeine to equal two shots of espresso. Wendy's day was looking better already. "So," she said between slightly more civilized gulps of the remaining half of the liquid, "do I even want to know what Joe's planning to do with a bag of petrified bagels?"

"He didn't say what they were for, but I'm guessing we'll find out on Friday when everyone starts setting up for Art Crawl."

Lacey and Wendy both paused to try to imagine how their fellow artist might work old bagels into his usual, decidedly phallic, style of sculpting. They both shuddered. Fortunately, Wendy's toast chose that moment to pop, providing a welcome distraction. While Wendy applied a generous helping of peanut butter to the toast and slapped the pieces together to form a sandwich, Lacey tapped her pencil against her notepad, looking worried. Wendy didn't know what was troubling her roommate, but she suspected that is was something other than the mental image of one of Joe 90's obelisks with bagels glued all over it.

"You're really going _out of town_ out of town this time?" Lacey finally asked. "This isn't going to be like that one time when you said you were going out of town and I ended up delivering Roxy Wasserman's special recipe skin care products to you and Creepy Bossman in the suburbs, right?"

Wendy hastily swallowed a mouthful of toast and peanut butter. "You remember that!?"

"Creepy Bossman's moisturizer needed thirty bottles of Tahiti Water to make just a couple ounces of the stuff! Of course I'm going to remember something as bad for the environment as that, and you haven't answered my question."

"Yes, I'm really going out of town. There's going to be a horrible, long plane ride and everything." Wendy chugged the remainder of the organic fair trade hazelnut soy latte flavored protein smoothie and returned the bottle to the kitchen counter with a loud 'clunk.'

"I thought you liked flying," said Lacey.

"Sure, I love flying as long as I'm the one in the pilot's seat. It's fun and reminds me of my dad. Flying commercial, on the other hand, combines the worst aspects of a Greyhound Bus ride with the whole issue of 'Don't meddle in the affairs of the TSA, for they are autocratic and quick to search body cavities.'" Maybe the obelisk would be _threaded through_ the bagels. Wendy really needed to stop thinking about this.

"The _important_ thing, though" Lacey said, returning to her original cause for concern, "is that if you're really going out of town this time, are you sure you'll make it back here by Friday?"

"Yes, Lacey, I promise I'll be back in time for Art Crawl, even if I have to hijack a plane to do it, even if I have to tell my boss to take--" Wendy was interrupted by a knock at the door, which she opened to reveal the aforementioned boss. "Speak of the devil."

"Hello, Dubbie," said the Middleman, stepping into the apartment, "is that a banana in your pocket or--"

"Don't start," she warned. "It's too early in the morning for witty banter."

"Actually, I was asking an honest question."

"Yes, it's a banana."

"Just checking." The Middleman looked over Wendy's shoulder and added, "Hello, Lacey." If Lacey noticed the wistful look in his eye, she ignored it.

"I'm sorry," she said icily, "have we met?"

"Look, I gotta go," Wendy sighed, wishing for the old days, when all she had to worry about when her employer and her roommate were both in the same place was raging hormones and unresolved sexual tension, instead of whatever this was. She hoisted her duffle bag onto her shoulder and grabbed what was left of her toast. "I'll call if I can, but I don't know what cell phone reception is going to be like at the job site. I'll definitely see you before Art Crawl. Right now though, duty calls. C'mon, MM," she said, pushing her boss back into the hallway with her free hand, "let's hit the road before we miss our flight."

"Of course, Dubbie."

They were stepping into to the elevator when the door to the apartment opened again and Lacey leaned out, calling, "Wendy, wait!"

"Yeah, Lace?"

"What should I tell Tyler if he calls looking for you?"

Crap, Tyler! And Wendy had managed not to think about him all morning so far, too. "That's probably not going to happen," Wendy said. Thank god it was too early in the morning for Noser or anyone else to be hanging around in the hallway yet.

"But if he does?" Lacey prompted.

"If he does, tell him...," Wendy trailed off. What _should_ she tell him? "Tell him that if he's going to break up with me, he damn well better do it in person, instead of over the phone or through you. See ya, Lace." She pulled the elevator's wooden grating into place and hit the down button, leaving Lacey staring sadly after her as she and the Middleman descended out of sight.

Later, in the Middlemobile, after they had been driving three miles below the speed limit in semi-awkward silence for several minutes, Wendy's curiosity refused to stay quiet any longer.

"Look," she said, "I've been meaning to ask you something for a long time now."

"Yes, Dubbie?"

"Just what exactly did you do to Lacey when you pulled that whole 'saving the world by making the ultimate sacrifice' stunt? At first I thought you rewrote history so that the two of you never met, but you've met plenty of times since then, and each time Lacey insists that she's never seen you before, and yet she has admitted to remembering the time she delivered the vial of aquatic banishment to you. Did you screw with her mind so that she can only remember you when you aren't around, or did you just reverse her emotions for you to the point that she gets all weirdly passive-aggressive whenever she sees you?"

"No to the former, and yes to the latter, but not directly."

"How so?"

"I did alter history, but not in the way that you thought I did," the Middleman said, staring straight ahead. Wendy wasn't sure is he was seeing the highway ahead of them, still mostly deserted in these predawn hours, or memories of power and knowledge beyond what a single human mind should have been able to endure. "Rather than directly affecting Lacey, I went back in time and altered the appearances of several of her most hated male authority figures to more closely resemble my own. That allowed our later interactions to remain similar enough that they would not skew the timeline too drastically while still destroying any chance of us ever having a happy relationship with each other. With an instant feeling of revulsion rather than of attraction to color her interpretation of our first encounter, she saw my treatment of your doorknob of an ex-boyfriend as bullying someone who was hopelessly physically inferior to myself rather than as karmic retribution for the asinine way in which he had treated you. Each subsequent encounter played out in a way that preserved the general flow of history but reinforced Lacey's negative opinion of me until, as you say, she started getting all weirdly passive-aggressive whenever she sees me."

"Well," said Wendy, "that explains why she's gone from calling you 'Sexy Bossman' to 'Creepy Bossman, and knowing what I know now, I can't say that I entirely disagree with her current assessment of you."

"She used to call me 'Sexy Bossman?'" said the Middleman, sounding far too eager for Wendy's taste.

"Sure, focus on that."

"You have to understand, Wendy, that as much as it continually pains me and most likely infuriates her, it was the only way other than suicide that I could think of to pay the price which the goddess Chac-mol required of me in order to keep the world from being destroyed by an already dangerous man driven mad by ultimate power."

"That doesn't mean that I have to like what you did to Lacey. You _did_ mess with her mind, after all."

"If anybody who knew about the situation could genuinely claim to be entirely happy with it, then I don't think it could qualify as having made the ultimate sacrifice."

"I suppose."

They drove in silence for several more minutes. They were nearly to the airport when the Middleman spoke again.

"Feel free to pretend that I never mentioned anything," he said cautiously, "but I couldn't help but overhear that you and Tyler are having some trouble."

"Maybe," said Wendy. "I don't know if we are or not, which is a problem in its own right. Tyler's third CD is due to be released soon, and it looks like it'll sell even than the first two combined, but the success doesn't seem to have changed him at all. Work hasn't been keeping us apart too badly. Even when Tyler and his band went on tour last summer, he still managed schedule it so that we saw each other every week or so, and no wannabe super villains have tried to use him against me since you redid reality."

"Sounds good so far."

"Exactly! Everything was going so smoothly. I was happy, and I thought he was happy too. Then Manservant Neville went off on some Indiana Jones-style expedition of trying to find a legendary lost city in Turkey just to prove that he could, and he invited Tyler along for the ride. I don't know what happened while they were over there, but ever since they got back a couple of weeks ago, Tyler has been avoiding me like the plague. I mean, did he meet some beautiful Turkish girl and they've been having international sexting marathons ever since? Did he and Neville have a Brokeback Mountain moment in the wilds of Cappadocia and now they're planning on running off to Vermont together? Is it none of the above but he's still decide that he's just not that into me? I have no way of knowing, because he suddenly won't talk to me."

"Is there anything I can do to help? I could talk Ida into checking the HEYDAR to see if anything relevant pops up."

"Thanks for the offer, MM, but I'd rather not have Cranky Librarian Version 2.0 mocking my personal life even more than usual. I'm trying to get better about saving my off the job problems for when I'm off the job. Right now, let's just get to Egypt and knock a three thousand year old piece of resurrected pharaoh jerky back to the underworld. With luck it'll be fun, educational, and a good way to vent some frustration."

"Sure thing, Dubbie."

And that's what they did. They had to sit through an eleven hour flight full of screaming children, a ten minute lecture by the Egyptian Vice Minister of Culture about the history of their target, Prince Knutepunktorcconhotep, III, followed by a twenty minute lecture by the Egyptian Vice Minister of Culture about what the Egyptian government would do to the two of them if they damaged any ancient artifacts or structures while battling the mummy, and then a five hour drive to a hidden necropolis deep in the desert, but finally they reached their goal. Wendy wouldn't classify the trip as fun, but it was quickly becoming educational, though not for the reasons which she had expected.

"Okay, I understand why we need all the protective amulets, but what's with the hazmat suits?" Wendy asked as she and the Middleman wrestled their way into the bulky outer coverings while standing on a hill overlooking the suspiciously brightly lit necropolis. "From what Dr. Hawass was saying about the Prince Knutepunktorcconhotep, III before he went off on that tangent about how he'd personally kick our asses if we broke anything, I thought he made it pretty that our mummy, despite being mobile and malevolent, should still be desiccated as desiccated can be, so we shouldn't need to worry about contagious bodily fluids or anything like that."

"It's not about possible diseases," said the Middleman. "It's about the possible sex pollen. It also provides some measure of defense against sandstorms, but mostly it's about avoiding sex pollen."

Wendy was unable to hold back a snort of laughter. "Sex pollen? I thought that stuff was a myth."

"The plant which produced it has been extinct for over a thousand years, but sex pollen is no myth, far from it, in fact," said the Middleman as he set the final seal of his hazmat suit. "Various dynasties throughout both the Old and the New Kingdoms were known to cover the interiors of royal tombs with sex pollen as a deterrent to grave-robbers. The promise of riches within was always enough for the grave-robbers to take the risk, but those who arrived a week or two after the initial break-in were usually the ones who were able to claim the treasure. Any who dared to enter before the sex pollen had time to degrade paid a terrible price for their trespassing."

"So you're telling me that the famous Curse of the Pharaohs was sex pollen?"

"It still is. The pollen grains may wither away into inert dust in less than a fortnight with continuous exposure to circulating fresh air, but when it is sealed away in a tomb, it can keep almost indefinitely, still as potent as the day it was harvested millennia later." Now Wendy didn't even try to suppress her laughter. "Gosh darn it, Dubbie, sex pollen is no laughing matter," scolded the Middleman. "One time Ravena and I made the mistake of going up against a mummy without wearing proper protection, and we both got dosed with a snootful of the stuff. I ended up tearing a half dozen separate muscles in my back and abdominals and breaking two ribs, and Ravena didn't fare much better. Neither of us could walk quite right for weeks after."

Upon hearing this latest revelation, Wendy's guffaw turned into a squawk halfway through completion. "Jeeze, MM," she protested, still gasping for breath, "way to drop a forty megaton TMI on a girl!"

"It's not what you're thinking, Dubbie," said the Middleman, though the way that his blushing was visible even by moonlight suggested that it was at least partly what Wendy was thinking. "Imagine that you're with the one person who you love most in all the world and who loves you just as much in return. Now imagine that the two of you have just inhaled a substance which fills you with more physical lust than you ever thought was possible. The two of you already know each other intimately on every level and have long ago abandoned any sort of emotional or sexual inhibitions you might have had in regard to your lover, so you have every reason to embrace these urges instead of fighting them."

"Like I said, boss, TMI," Wendy insisted, but the indignation in her voice was beginning to give way to merriment once more.

"I'm not finished yet. Imagine everything that I just told you, and now imagine that you are completely unable to act on any of those overpowering urges because you are incapacitated by a sneezing fit which lasts for seven hours and is so severe that you have more than a ninety percent chance of death from either internal injuries or exhaustion. Before the age of modern medicine, that number was probably so close to one hundred percent as to be indistinguishable from it."

"Okay," said Wendy, finally getting the seal on her own hazmat suit closed, still snickering as she did so, "consider me firmly ensconced in this thing until the air-quality monitoring device gives the all-clear. I still think that the idea of ancient Egyptian sex pollen traps is hilarious."

"Let's hope that you never have reason to change that opinion." They did a quick check on each other's suits and then cocked their weapons. "Ready to go to work?"

"Let's rock and roll."

Together, Wendy Watson and the Middleman marched down the hill and into the necropolis. The artist in Wendy marveled at the brightly colored paintings which lined every surface, perfectly preserved by burial in the desert sands until the newly awakened mummy had summoned it all to the surface to provide a base of operations for his plans to conquer modern Egypt and restart his long extinct ruling dynasty. The pragmatist in her kept a wary eye out for the easiest escape routes, because anything which could so easily be dragged up out of the sand, even a massive complex such as this, could probably end up sinking back into it again just as easily. The collection of tombs, temples, and other buildings was vast, but their quarry was easy enough to locate. All they needed to do was follow the alternating sounds of chanting and maniacal laughter.

They found the shriveled, linen-wrapped corpse which had once been Prince Knutepunktorcconhotep, III standing all alone in the center of a large, column lined room, surrounded by flaming torches and braziers. His stick thin arms were raised above his head, tracing hieroglyphics with glowing trails which seemed to come ghosting out of his fingertips like spider webs, while his leathery looking mouth chanted incomprehensible songs in a surprisingly rich baritone for someone whose lungs were still in a jar on the floor next to him. Every time that he completed another line of text, he would pause to cackle madly for several moments before continuing with his task. That sort of behavior never led to anything pleasant happening. The two warriors split up when they entered the room, Wendy circling around the room's perimeter in a clockwise direction, while the Middleman did the same going counter-clockwise. Both Dr. Hawass's lecture and the Middleman's own battle plan agreed that if the mummy had not yet summoned any bodyguards, then the best course of action would be simple, direct attack at the first opportunity, so when Wendy saw that she had a clear line of fire, she took it.

"Yo, Bubba-ho-tep," she called, stepping out of the shadows and into the torchlight.

The mummy spun around to face her and bellowed something furiously. Wendy hadn't had enough time to learn very much Ancient Egyptian, but she had picked up enough to know that whatever he had just said wasn't very flattering.

"Same to you, pal," she replied and fired a blast from her Middle-gun straight into the winged scarab amulet which the creature wore directly over his heart. The mummy let loose a long high-pitched scream and collapsed into a dusty heap of pitch and natron blackened bones and shredded rags punctuated here and there by the occasional glint of gold and gemstones. The Middleman stepped from behind a nearby stone column and approached the pile. "Don't," warned Wendy. "It's a trick. Get an ax."

"Actually, it's the real deal, Dubbie. Mummies really do go down that easily," said the Middleman as he leaned forward and stirred the shattered bits with one hazmat suited foot. "For all their supernatural skills and powers, a mummy's ability to function on this plane of existence is still tied to the wellbeing of its original mortal body, which tends to be rather fragile thanks to the embalming process and extreme old age. Shuffle the mortal coil, so to speak, and the spirit has no choice but to shuffle itself back to where it came from before its reawakening. In this sort of situation all we really need to worry about i--" He was interrupted by a low rumbling sound and a sudden shaking of the floor, both of which continued to grow in intensity at an alarming rate. "--Is that," he finished with a sigh. "Oh fooey. Run, Dubbie," he said, pushing her toward the exit and following only a step behind.

All around them, the huge stone structures began to shake themselves apart. Wendy and the Middleman bolted out of the self-destructing necropolis, flinging themselves to the ground at a safe distance, just out of reach of the outermost collapsing wall, as a tidal wave of sand and newly broken pebbles swept over them. For a moment, all was quiet save for the gentle hiss of airborne grit raining back down onto the desert and the plastic surfaces of their hazmat suits. Then a massive green fireball launched itself skyward for no apparent reason from the center of what had once been the necropolis. Wendy staggered to her feet, cleared the face window of her suit as best she could, and surveyed the freshly ruined ruins. The Middleman did the same. The sun was just beginning to approach the eastern horizon, making the full extent of the destruction visible.

"Aw, man," Wendy said as she looked around. No two blocks remained properly standing on top of each other. "Dr. Hawass is going to kick our asses."

"Don't worry, Dubbie," said the Middleman, patting her consolingly on the back. "He always says that, but he never follows through on it. Learning this is just another step in becoming the next Middleman.

"If all it takes to get rid of a rogue mummy is a Landrover and a gun, and the buildings apparently always fall down no matter who pulls the trigger, why did we have to jump at the call at oh-dark-thirty to fly here from halfway around the world? Why couldn't Mr. Big Shot Vice Minister of Culture come out here and do this himself?"

"Like many things in this world, it's mostly about politics. The Egyptian government needs an outside contractor to handle these matters so that they have a convenient way to distance them from it all should the general public ever happen to learn of the inevitable destruction which occurs on average of once ever four or five years. Our organization, on the other hand, need the Egyptian government to allow us continued access to the many powerful artifacts which they own. With those two needs in mind, an agreement as made, and it has served both sides well for more than a century."

"I'm still not happy about it."

"You don't have to be happy about it, but you need to be aware that the alternative would be worse. Don't think of it as wasting our time in the short-term. Think of it as ensuring the availability of greater supernatural muscle for those times when we need to bring out the really big guns."

"Yeah, I suppose I can see the value in that," said Wendy tiredly. "Are there any more pearls of wisdom that I need to learn before we can go home?"

"Only one," said the Middleman as his portable air-quality sensor chirped happily, "it has now been confirmed that there was no sex pollen on the premises, so you can take off the hazmat suit now if you want. However, I would suggest leaving it on at least until we get back to the car due to the high levels of regular particulates in the air. Better safe than sorry. Now," he said, turning and striding toward the hill where their now much dirtier vehicle was parked, "let's get out of here before the sun gets any higher and starts to wake up the local sand squid."

"The what!?" Wendy called after her departing boss. She ran to catch up with him, keeping an eye out for any suspicious movements in the sand, but nothing untoward happened.

Later, on the infinitely tedious flight home, Wendy was able to reflect on the fact that the one major upside to the whole stupidly easy battle against a weak-sauce mummy was that, for the first and possibly last time in her career as Middleman in training, she was actually going to get to Art Crawl without any trouble. Any maybe, if Tyler was answering his phone, she might be able to talk him into coming to Lacey's protest next week, and the three of them could throw hundreds of Wacky WallWalkers at a sushi restaurant's giant plate-glass window. If there was one thing that this job had taught her, it was that anything was possible.

  
**The End**   



End file.
